Monster (9 page)

Ke
vin moved closer. He put his arm around her, and
Ange
la
sagged into his side. “You can't leave,”
he told her.
“I’ll
go on a rampage if you do. I'll sleep with every gi
rl in
school and get them all pregnant, and they'll have to
close
the place down just to save face. It would be a disaster
for
the whole state
.”
He le
aned over and kissed her cheek. “It’ll
happe
n, Angie dear, if you leave me.”

She sniffed again and smiled, but her smile didn't
last.
For all her contact with both Mary and Kevin over the
past
summer, the two of them didn't really know each o
ther.
They moved in separat
e orbits. “
Mary's lost her mi
nd,”
Angela said softly.

“
I hea
rd you talked to her at the stati
on,
” Kevin said.

She sat back and wiped her face.
“
News sure gets aro
und fast.
Did
you hear what we talked about?”

“
No. Nobody has any idea why she did i
t.
Everyon
e is
waiting for you to tell them.
”

“
If I tell you what s
he told me, can you keep it secret?”

“
Absolutely
,”
he said.

From experience she knew Kevin was one to keep
his
word
. “
Mary says she had to kill Todd and Kathy and
Jim because they were monsters.”

“I could have told you that,”
Kevin said with a str
aight
face.

“I'm serious, Kev.”

Kevin blinked. “Tell me the whole story.”

She did, everything that had happened the night of
the
party, and then everything Mary said at the police sta
tion.
Kevin
l
istened patiently without interrupting
.
He h
ad a
keen mind; he was a straight-A student. As she s
poke
she hoped he'd be able to shed new light on what
had
happened. When she was done, she sat patiently and wai
ted
for him to speak.

“
She certainly sounds like she's
l
ost her mind
,”
he
said.

“That's what I think.”

“
But maybe it's not
her fault.”

“What do you mean?”
Angela asked.

“I
hesitate to bring this up. It probably won't
help,
but
it's a theory I'm sure th
e papers will get to eventually.”

“What is it?”

“
It
happened last year, before you arrived. Point High
ha
d
just opened. Before, we used to take buses to Balton High. It was a pain in the ass
–
forty-five minutes each way,
and
Bal
t
on High was way overcrowded. Anyway, we got our school, and everybody was happy until last fall, near the
end
of
football season. That was when a group of students
s
tart
ed
to get headaches and stomach
aches. There were
a
bout
thirty of them, maybe more. A couple passed out
in
class, and it wasn't unusual for someone to run to the
rest
room suddenly to throw up. Everyone got spooked, and
a
huge meeting of parents
and faculty and students was ca
lled. Experts were called in to study the school's water,
the
materials that had been used in constructing the build
i
ng
s
,
even the grass and flowers that landscaped the cam
pus.
They didn't find a thing wrong, and then suddenly the problems began to diminish
.
Although they didn't go away
alto
gether. The experts
chalked it up to mass hysteria.”

“
What did they
think brought on the hysteria?”
Angela
as
ked.

“
They had a few theories. The weirdest one was that sum
mer
had gone on too long. We did have strange weather
last
year. It was November, and we still had some days
in
the
mid-eighties. But like I said, the problem seemed
to
take care of itself. Yet the interesting thing was that
only
a certain segment of the students was affected. Your
story
made me remember that.”

“
The football players and the cheerleaders?
”
Angela
asked.

“
Exactly.
I
wasn't affected. None of my friends was. But
I
think
all the girls on the cheerleading squad were.
I
k
now
Kathy Baker was. I remember her mother wrote a
nasty
letter to the local paper saying how something at t
he
school was poisoning her dear daughter
.”

“W
as
Jim
Kline affected? Or Todd Green?”

“I
couldn't say
for sure. They might have been.”

“Was Mary?”
Angela asked.

“I
doubt it. I thin
k it was only those two groups.”
Kevin
c
huc
kled.
“
Maybe it was hysteria caused by stress
.
The
football team los
t all but two games last season. That’s
not unusual for a school that's just getting started,
but I
know the players didn't like the ribbings they cons
tantly
took.
”

“
Did any of those who got sick act emotionally d
istraught?”

“
Not that
I
know of
,” Kevin said.

“
Then what does this have to do with Mary? The
contaminati
on theory
–
or whatever you wa
nt to call it – can’t
b
e used to explain what she did.”

“
You're loo
k
ing at it backwards
,”
Kevin said.
“The cont
amination theory could be used to explain what Mary
says the others did.”

“
You honestly believe that they did those things?
” Angela
asked.

“
No. As I s
aid, it's just a weird theory. I
think M
ary
blew a circuit and started shooting people. It's happe
ned
before, you know. Maybe
Jim
was dumping her and she was upset.”

“
He told me he was dumping her
,”
Angela said.

“You talked to him?”

“This morning, at the funeral
s
.”
She didn't bring up
the fact t
hat he had sort of asked her out. Kevin would jealous.

“
How is he?
”
Kevin asked.

“Fine. His leg is better.”

“
Already?
”
Kevin asked.
“I heard she shot him good.”

“
That's just a
rumour. She barely winged him.” Angela
stood and paced in front of the couch
. “I
don't
want
to drop this getting sick business yet. Are you sure
the experts found nothing unusual?”

“
That was the official announcement. They c
losed the s
chool for a few days while they took samples of everyth
ing. I
went up and w
atched them. They were thorough.”

“
Did any of the symptoms return later in the year?
Like
when tra
ck and baseball season started?”

“
We didn't have a track or a baseball team last year
. I’m
not sure we'll have one this year. We're still getting
the
teams together. We only have a student body of six hun
dred to draw from.
Bu
t to
answer your question,
I
really don't
know.”

Angela stopped her pacing. “
I just hate to accept the
idea
that Mary'
s
gone
bonkers.” She frowned. “
Maybe
t
hose three were affected by something and did do strange
things.”

“
How did
Jim
seem when you talked to him?”

“
Fine
,”
Angela sa
i
d.

“
Did he look
capable of eating anyone alive?”

Angela waved her hand.
“
Even Mary admitted that she
never actually saw them hurt
a
nybody.”

“
She
was
quick to blow them away with the little evidence that she had
,” Kevin said. “
We could go check ou
t that warehouse.”

“We can't.
She
couldn't remember where it was.”

“How convenient,”
Kevin said.

Angela nodded
. “
I
thought the same thing.
Hey
,
would you like to go to the library with me? I'd like to read more
a
bou
t
the reports of t
he students ge
tting sick.”

Kevin
stood. “
Sure. As long as you promise me you won't
lea
v
e
the area for fear of
catching an invisible disease.”

Angela chuckled. “
There's no danger of its being invisible with me. When I catch the least
little thing, it always shows.”

Angela had never been
to
the library in Point
.
In Chicago
it might
have been mistaken for a private bookshelf. It was
dismally
small. But they had come only for back issues of the local paper,
Th
e Poin
t Herald,
and there were plenty
of
copies available in the back, the Librarian said. She was
a
n
old woman
,
perhaps a bit senile, and she must have
been
l
os
ing her sight
.
She was listening
to
a book on tape when they entered. As they
knelt to collect the issues they w
anted,
they heard the Ghost of Christmas Past chewing
out
Scrooge
for being such a cheap bastard.

It
took them only a few minutes to rind the right papers.
As
Angela read the articles, she discovered
little
new
. About
three dozen students had complained of being ill.
Doctors were brought in and could find nothing
wrong
with them. Contractors and chemists were contacted. Th
ey, too, couldn't f
ind anything wrong with the school
. Then
the students had got better, the experts had gone a
way
and everybody was as happy as could be until Mary B
lanc
had crashed a party
with a shotgun and a serious attitude
problem.

There was, however, one thing that Angela learned
that
she hadn't known before. It came out of an interview
with
the head of the contracting firm that had built the sch
ool.
Angela called Kevin over and showed him the quote.